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November 16, 2001Contact: Dan Ayres, (360) 249-4628

Log spill prompts warning to razor clam diggers

OLYMPIA – The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is advising clam diggers and others who visit coastal beaches to exercise extra caution in the days ahead, as thousands of logs spilled from a barge off the Oregon coast continue to drift northward.

Some logs have already made landfall on the Long Beach Peninsula, where razor clam digging is scheduled today and Saturday after noon. The U.S. Coast Guard, as well as the state Parks Department and local law enforcement agencies, are monitoring the situation on coastal beaches.

"We're advising clam diggers to take extra precautions under these conditions," said Dan Ayres, WDFW razor clam biologist. "There is always a risk in any activity that takes a person near the surf and the presence of a large number of drifting logs drifting off the coast only increases that risk."

For people who still plan to go digging, Ayres recommends the following precautions:

Don't go – or dig – around any logs lying on the beach.

Don't dig near the surf. "There are plenty of clams up higher on the beach," Ayres said.

Don't dig on an incoming tide. That's when logs are most likely to be heaved onto the beach.

Those precautions apply not only to Long Beach, but also to other razor clam beaches further north which are also scheduled to be open for digging today and Saturday after noon.

They include Twin Harbors, Copalis, Mocrocks and – on Saturday only – Kalaloch.